In Dreams: We Are
by SaxonnyRETURNS
Summary: Sarah dreams of him nightly. She is also growing up...


When she closed her eyes the dream, like it had every night for the last three months, started the second her mind slipped into a deep sleep.

It started as sound. In the black nothingness, she could hear a tinkling of bells followed by the strains of strings and a harpsichord.

Blurry light and moving figures passed through her gaze, distorted as if viewed through a fishbowl.

The music grew and she could now hear laughter and murmurs of conversation.

The world turned upside down, then right side up and she could see. She was at a ball, resplendent and pure in her rose ball gown. She was frozen in place, the picture of stillness in the churning sea of laughing faces behind masks, groping hands and wriggling hips. She was searching, always searching for someone…

She was an anomaly in the midst of the party. They were having fun and she was looking for something. She kept her arms tucked at her sides, her hands buried in her skirts as she tiptoed her way past dancers in masks. She ducked under draped finery that extended down from the ceiling, the royal wallflower, still looking, still looking.

Butterflies tumbled in her stomach when she spied him out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head quickly to not lose sight of him. As quick as a thought he was gone again, leaving her frowning in frustration. He played this cat and mouse game every night, prolonging their meeting. She had grown accustomed to the familiar sensation of her heart fluttering in her chest like a bird when he finally deigned to appear. There he was, around that corner. Over there, lounging between two swaying women.

"Sarah," he whispered behind her, and then with a whirl of her skirts, her hair flowing in the gust of magic that surrounded him, she was again in the circle of his arms, being led around the crowded dance floor.

He was splendid in his midnight blue waistcoat, high waist-ed breeches enhancing his form, a spill of lace at his throat and wrists. One hand held hers tight by his gloved fingers, another remained innocently at her waist; the perfect picture of a gentleman.

But he was not a gentle man. She knew it as well as she knew her own name. However, their nightly reunion never progressed past the dance because she, as nature and destiny demanded, was the innocent heroine. Good and evil, innocence and hunger, could not become bedfellows. Still, that certain something-that-she-could-not-name...that thing that tightened low in her belly when he spoke left her confused about her feelings and wondering if he knew what to do about them.

"You're him, aren't you? You're the Goblin King," she said as she had said on their first meeting, as she said every night when they danced.

"Have you forgotten already?"

She hadn't. She couldn't forget him, not when she dreamed about him on a nightly basis. But she had spoken the right words and defeated him. This constant vision was her guilty secret.

"...I missed you," she whispered, blushing and unable to meet his mismatched eyes.

Ah yes, the other guilty secret of hers, spoken only to a dream version. That although she won their little game, sometimes...just sometimes...she wished she hadn't.

He tilted his head back and smirked arrogantly. "I know."

Her reading material, though advanced for her age, still consisted of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and the chivalric code of the Round Table. Consequently, she never knew what else to say to her dream King. Sarah contented herself with waltzing to the music and listening to him sometimes hum/sometimes sing/always looking at her. As usual, dawn came too quickly. They were the last couple standing, their graceful dancing now reduced to a rhythmic swaying.

He lightly touched the silver vines entwined in her hair, and smoothed his gloved hand down her curling locks.

"I'm afraid its time for me to go," she said sorrowfully, feeling the pressing urge to wake as the day was born.

"I understand," he said, following her expected script perfectly.


End file.
